SERIES REVIEW – A Spanish James Bond, awakened from 60 years of hibernation is back in action. He’s a real “super agent” (in every sense of the word, so he’s a kind of Captain America). The Spanish action-adventure series, also based on a very original comic book, is half-serious, half-parody. Still, somehow neither of those things really works – at least not according to the two episodes we’ve seen in press screenings and already on HBO Max.

Perhaps few people know it nowadays, but James Bond wasn’t the first James Bond-like successful spy novel series, in which a charming, suit-clad super-spy saved the free world novel by novel during the Cold War era, while being hunted by Soviet and Eastern European secret agents. Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath, aka OSS 177, was the creation of French writer Jean Bruce and the first OSS 117 novel was published in 1949, while Ian Fleming’s Casiny Royale was published four years later in 1953, when OSS 117 was a huge success in France. Bruce continued his spy novels at a furious pace until his death in 1963, and after his death his wife and children continued the series until 1992. OSS 117 also appeared on the silver screen in the 1960s (following the success of James Bond in the cinema) in various co-productions (which we classify as ‘Euro-spy’), with the American super-spy being played by actors who were bigger stars than Sean Connery at the time. If you are interested in more details about these classic films (unfortunately they are not streamed anywhere), you can read about them on this site, which is dedicated to the special Blu-ray release.

On the other hand, while the James Bond films were a worldwide success, the OSS 117 movies were somehow stuck in the B category and rather unsuccessful, only the 2006 parody series managed to revive the franchise with three films and since they were relatively successful, it is unlikely that a “serious” film will ever be made of the OSS 117 adventures.

But if we’re talking parody, we must also mention Jean-Paul Belmondo’s 1973 film The Dazzler, in which the French star played both a Jean Bruce-like writer and the American super spy he invented, who took part in hilarious adventures that challenged classic spy films.

Little-known series adaptation of an unknown Spanish comic book

Why have I written this as a long introduction to the Spanish series Garcia! It’s because Garcia! reminds me in many ways of OSS 117 and the films based on it – much more than James Bond. It’s just as much about a typical European (only not French, but Spanish) superhero, with the same strong B-grade feel to the story and action, and even the Spanish lead, Francisco Ortiz, looks a lot like the Frenchman Jean Dujardin, who played the agent in the parody series OSS 117.

Perhaps the biggest problem with Garcia! stems precisely from these similarities. While the not very well known Garcia! comic (which we even got in the press material of The Informer, courtesy of HBO Max – lucky for us, because you can hardly even search for it on the internet, there is so much about it) has indeed highly stylised, often comical frames that can be taken as a kind of parody, it is not clear from Garcia! whether the creators intended it as a parody or whether they are serious?

Is this supposed to be a joke? Or was it not?

That in itself would not be a problem, but this “we don’t know if we’re joking” is unfortunately at the expense of not being able to decide whether the action scenes are so atomic (with pathetically choreographed fights that would have been ridiculous even in B movies of the sixties) because it is a parody or because the filmmakers simply don’t know how to do this sort of thing. Since the tone of the series is basically serious and there is no concrete indication of a parody, it takes a lot of good faith to believe the creators that this was meant to be a joke, especially since what we see in action is not funny, but rather pathetic.

All I can write is that everyone should watch (because it’s a great film anyway) the opening credits of the aforementioned Jean-Paul Belmondo film, The Dazzling, directed by Philip de Broca, which makes it quite obvious (and really chuckling), right from the start of the film, that this is a parody: Belmondo’s brilliant comic performance, the exaggerated, bloody action to the extreme, and the figure of the cleaning woman who vacuums the beach at the end of the action scenes (when reality ‘meets’ the world imagined by the writer at work).

Hammy acting all the way

There is nothing like that in Garcia! The performance of Francisco Ortiz, with his Greek features but unblinking gaze, or the acting of Veki G. Velilla, who also plays the typically naive heroine Antonia, the other female protagonist: a story set in modern times, also rather poorly, do not suggest this. The whole thing is simply a lame secret agent story, with a Terminator and Star Wars (hibernation) touch, an uncharacteristic B-grade story, extremely lame action scenes and the tone of the series as a whole, which does not indicate whether this is a parody or should be taken seriously. Or is it just a parody of itself? Unfortunately, it’s probably the latter, although it’s hard to judge 100% for now after two episodes.

So for now, this series is a disappointment and although I don’t expect much from it based on the first two episodes, I will give it a chance and watch the rest of the episodes and either update this article or write a separate article about it. I’m sorry because as a James Bond and OSS 117 fan I expected much more from it, the Franco era with spies would be “worth a special Mass” (or story), but unfortunately this series is not to be taken seriously at the moment and we didn’t get a good laugh out of it.

-BadSector-